A Study On The Chinese Translation Of Little Women From The Perspective Of Androgyny

Since the cultural turn in the 1980 s,feminist translation study has become a significant branch for culture identity studies.Feminist translators take translation as a battlefield to challenge the patriarchal authority and make female translators visible in the field.It is no doubt that the theory has backed the feminist movement up.However,due to the overemphasis of translator's subjectivity,backlash is also triggered against this theory.Radical translations are often adopted for the sake of feminism cause.To compensate the weakness of feminist translation,some Chinese scholars introduced the perspective of“androgyny” into feminist translation studies.Androgyny refers to the combination of masculine and feminine characteristics in one mind.A translator with androgynous perspective could interpret the original not only from his/her own gender's side,but also the other gender's.Apart from presenting a new gender perspective,androgyny inspires translation studies in terms of establishing a new type of relation between authors and translators,which calls for cooperation and equal dialogue.This mode of translation would subvert the convention in which authors,like men,taken as the embodiment of creativity and originality,hold an exalted position,while translators,like women,as the derivatives and the follower,are often silenced and marginalized.This thesis picked two male translators' versions of Little Women by American author Louisa May Alcott: Jin Xiaofei and Liang Zhijian.Through the comparative study of the two versions from the androgynous perspective,this study discusses how androgynous perspective helps the translator in interpreting the source text and then recreating the target text,if the translated text shows the translator's androgynous perspective,and what is needed for a translator to realize the androgynous perspective.The research result indicates that the translator Liang Zhijian greatly reproduces the feminine consciousness of the original through the depiction of female character's speech,behavior and psychology.Translator Jin Xiaofei shows empathy to the original at times,but fails to show the androgynous perspective on the whole.By studying translator's gender consciousness in the translated text,this thesis hopes to explore the significance of the androgynous translation theory and thus enrich translation studies and facilitate feminism movement.